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Jaguars not sure blackouts will significantly spike attendance

When the Jaguars officially announce Thursday that Sunday's home opener against the Arizona Cardinals will be blacked out on local television, they're hoping -- but not counting on it -- that fans wanting to see the game will buy tickets in the last three days in big numbers.

At this point, that appears to be a very iffy proposition.

After months of repeatedly telling fans that home games would almost certainly be blacked out this season, less than 500 tickets have been sold since the team's 14-12 loss Sunday to the Indianapolis Colts.

It's a virtual certainty that the Cardinals game will be among the top two lowest season-opening crowds in Jaguars' history, right next to the 45,653 that showed up for the 2000 home opener against the Cincinnati Bengals. However, that game's attendance was heavily impacted by the threat of a hurricane. No such weather calamity is posing a threat this weekend.

Here's how bad the ticket situation is right now: Bill Prescott, the Jaguars' chief financial officer, told me Wednesday that even if 2,500-3,000 tickets were sold between now and gametime, it still wouldn't get the tickets distributed count to 50,000. That's an alarming total for a season opener against an opponent that narrowly missed winning the Super Bowl last season.

For the past four years, the Jaguars' attendance has been based on tickets distributed, not actual bodies in the seats. So that hurricane-marred game against Cincinnati and the franchise record-low attendance of 43,363 for a December, 2003 game against Houston represented bodies in the seats. If the number had been based on tickets distributed, the number would have been a lot higher.

Translation: Sunday's game against Arizona, barring a phenomenal walk-up crowd, could see as many empty seats at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium as any time in history.

This is not an embellishment, folks. With Jacksonville being such a small market and revenue streams other than ticket sales being so small, the NFL is going to be monitoring attendance figures very closely. If blackouts become a regular trend in this city beyond this season, the Jaguars are going to be No. 1 on everybody's "Team Most Likely To Move” list.

The reality is, economically, Jacksonville is in a tough spot. It has to depend on a higher percentage of people within the city limits to buy tickets because the Jaguars don't attract a lot of customers outside Duval, Clay, St. John's and Nassau counties.

If Jaguar fans want to ensure that this team stays in Jacksonville (because an NFL team won't come back here for a long, long time, if at all), they can't let this blackout thing become more than a one-year aberration.

You don't want too many empty seats for the 2009 home opener to become a bad omen.